3.0.5 Release Candidate Almost Ready!

Alright everybody, 3.0.5 is nearing completion so I have some pretty screenshots to share of some of the UI enhancements coming in this version, as well as some information on some additional features I didn’t mention last time.

First, I want to make it clear that these are still in flux, and based on feedback from you guys and the infamous iSub beta team, these will be very likely look a little different at release time.

Now with that said, on to the screenshots!

Finally added the album art and info previews when browsing folders that’s existed in the iPad version for a while now to the iPhone. Also, you can tap the album art thumbnail to see the art full screen.

But the biggest changes are in the player

First off, the interface has been shuffled around a bit to get the seek bar visible all the time. No longer will you have to flip the album art just to see the song progress!

Now that the song info panel is actually only used to display song file info, the shuffle, repeat, and bookmark buttons got moved to a new location.

Also, by popular request, the playlist panel is now the first panel shown when you flip the album art. This should really increase the usability of the player. No more unnecessary flipping and sliding to do the most frequently used actions.

Now on to the entirely new area, the graphical equalizer

There is full 2-axis EQ control including built in and custom presets, plus a gain boost slider for those low gain podcasts and other recordings that just can’t seem to get loud enough even on full volume.

There are also 4 different audio visualizers currently included so that you can visualize the EQ changes you’re making on the fly!

On top of that, there are a few additional features that made it in to the new release.

By default, only the first portion of the upcoming song is automatically pre-cached. That way you can get all the benefits of gapless playback and quick song start times without burning extra bandwidth if you end up skipping past the next song.

The code for sliding to reveal the cache and queue buttons has been completely rewritten to prevent accidental taps. This has been a real annoyance for a while, and should be completely eliminated going forward.

And on top of that, it’s now also possible to tap and hold to show the cache and queue buttons. So if you’re not a fan of sliding, there’s another option.

You can now enter the cache size you want in settings directly with the keyboard instead of relying on the slider to do it. On large capacity iOS devices that could be a real pain. Now you can just type 400mb or 1.4 gb, etc to set the maximum/minimum cache size.

The tab that displays songs currently playing on the server is actually useful now! You can cache or queue any songs displayed there by swiping or tap-n-hold. And selecting a song will load that entire album into the player.

For all newly created bookmarks, opening the bookmark will load the entire album folder into the playlist. That’s been an often requested feature. Please note, make sure to update to the latest Subsonic release so that it sends down the information needed for this to work.

Thanks to Crittercism, there’s now a support forum built right into the app! I always strive to give the best support possible, but many people don’t know that they can contact me for help. Hopefully, having a support forum available front and center will help more people get the best experience from iSub.
The Crittercism plugin even detects when crashes happen so that the next time iSub is open there will be a helpful link to the built in forum and to the iSub support email address so everyone can get immediate help with any issues.

The 3.0.5 update is getting very close to release candidate quality. There’s still some UI work to be done for the iPad version, and a few bugs to fix, but overall it’s coming together quite well. As per usual, I can’t give a solid ETA because I’m always wrong, but if all goes well, I’m hoping to submit this weekend or next week at the latest when it’s ready (man I need to stop breaking my no ETAs rule :P).

I’ll have more information and screenshots posted as soon as the first official release candidate is christened. Until then, if you have any suggestions or comments, please post below, in the forum, or send me an email at support@isubapp.com

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your patience waiting for this update and for all of the fantastic emails I’ve received from iSub users!!

35 Responses to “3.0.5 Release Candidate Almost Ready!”

WOOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!! Thanks so much for this! I found myself manually ping into the app store solely to see if there are any updates on your app. Haha much appreciation for your dedication and your love for the app and also for listening to user’s feedback. I hope your app stays the best

Oh. Btw. Until now when you add songs to your playlist that you’ve already put in the playlist it adds a second instance of the song. Has that been addressed? I think I mentioned few months ago about, when the playlist is shuffled its really difficult to find a song I want to listen to and sometimes forget that the song is in there or just because I cant find the song I re-add the song to the playlist.

I know it’s really late in the game but if it’s not TOO difficult, may I suggest Two things?

First, when playlist is shuffled, the physical playlist is not shuffled but the ordinals on the left hand side reflect the order the playlist will play? (if representing the order of the songs is important)

Second, when searching songs to add to the playlist, maybe on the track display some sort of icon that tells the user the song is already added in the playlist. I guess this only applies if iSub still adds songs that are currently in the playlist.

I hadn’t really thought of that playlist behavior as a bug, though I can see why it would be preferred to not add the same song twice. It would certainly be possible to check first and pop a warning to ask if you really want to add it. I’ll make an enhancement ticket for that.

Re: the other two suggestions:

1. Interesting, I’ll have to see what that would take to do. What’s the main reason you’d prefer it to work that way? In my mind it would be more confusing because you couldn’t easily see what song is next without scrolling up and down, which would be near impossible on a long playlist…

2. As far as displaying an icon, would that just show that it’s in the current playlist, not all saved/server playlists? Because it’s relatively simple to show an icon denoting that the song is already on the play queue (only one table to cross reference), but to check all playlists would be prohibitively expensive time wise.

1. I probably wanted the feature because I had hard time finding the song that I want to play next. I know it’s shuffled but sometimes I want to play a specific song, you know? And this is what brought me about the issue of adding the song twice. Since I can’t find the song in the playlist, I manually find it in the folder to play the song but that inherently adds a second instance of the song. I guess this can all be resolved by maybe having a search box at the top of the playlist? Or if search box is not feasible when I find the song in the folder, would it be possible to see if the song is in the current playlist and if so, just play the song?

Which leads us to the 2. point

2. I was just referring to the current playlist. And since you mention it won’t be that expensive maybe the application could have 2 way of finding/playing a specific song? First is the search box, and the second is to either have the icon OR just simply play the song, letting the user know that the song is in the playlist (Icon may work better since you have less clicking and the icon will ALREADY mean the song is in the playlist and by pressing on the song, it will play the song)

Gotcha, that makes sense. The whole playlist system is getting an overhaul for the 3.1 update (the next big update after 3.0.5). I’ll make a note about adding a search box to the playlist. That sounds like a good idea.

First, is the icon approach. Icon would be visible if the song is in the current queue/playlist; not including the offline/server ones. Icon can be displayed as is displayed, maybe as an overlay over the whole item (I just made a mockup and I would like to send it to you but don’t know how to..)

Secondly, if the icon is going to make it too clunky, if the song is tapped to cache/queue, it will popup a dialog to say the song is already in the playlist. And the buttons might be ‘Ok’ or ‘Play this song’. I don’t know if that happens, you want to behavior to erase all the queued songs and play the selected song or simply play the song from the queue. Maybe a third button ‘Play from queue’? I think it becomes a little hairy at that point. Haha

I think displaying the icon and when the user clicks that item it should just play the song from the current playlist/queue

Ps. Am I right in using the word playlist(current) and queue interchangeably? Because queue is simply adding a song to the current playlist, correct?

I’ll add all this to my notes on possible additions for the playlist overhaul.

Btw I tend to refer to the current list of playing songs as the current playlist. Only because I use the word queue when referring to the cache queue. But ya the current playlist is really the play queue, so it doesn’t really matter which one it’s called.

What a great app this is, looking forward to the next update. This is now my Apple music app permanent replacement, well worth the investment.

With regards to the next track pre-caching on 3G, would it be possible to add a feature to set pre-caching of a custom amount of upcoming tracks, i.e. three or more?

On my commute to work my phone switches between 3G and 2G coverage multiple times, I find with the current two songs being cached I am able to listen uninterrupted if the songs are 6-7 minutes or longer, however with shorter tracks end up getting cut off.

If the option was there to pre-cache three or more tracks then I suspect my listening experience would largely be interrupted (3G is very fast when I have it, songs cache quite quick).

Part of the rewrite that went into 3.0.5 laid the groundwork for this to be possible, but the implementation isn’t done yet. At some point there will be an option for this, assuming the Apple review people let me do it.

Also, I know this isn’t a real solution, but in the meantime, if you have a particular album you’re in the mood for before you leave for work, you can cache it manually before you leave by sliding to the right on the artist/album/song and hitting cache.

Hmm, the headphone remote should be fully supported, since it’s the same code that makes the multitasking tray controls work. I don’t have a pair of headphones with a remote control to test myself, but I remember having some people say it worked for them.

Which headphones do you have? If they’re reasonably priced, I can buy a pair to test.

I do sincerely apologize for the delays, it just seems like every time I fix something and think it’s close to ready, the testers find something else 😛

I’ll have a new blog post up in the near future with some screenshots of the finalized interface for the player and the all new iPad interface. When it gets ready for submission time, I’ll post another one with more information.

This started as a small bug fix update and then ballooned into almost a completely rewrite. So much has been rewritten that there has been a lot more testing needed than usual. But the end is in sight and just a few more showstoppers to fix (assuming no new ones are found of course!).

I have the same experience with the remote that comes with it. Play/pause works but track forward and back don’t had any effect. Not sure what Apple make available for that kind of stuff but if there was an easy way to fix this it’d be great!
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Thanks!!!

I got the headphone remote control in today to test (it’s an iLuv iEA15 headphone remote control). At least on my iPhone 4S on iOS 5.1, the forward and back functions are working for me in both iSub 3.0.4 and 3.0.5. I’m not sure why some other controllers aren’t working, but the support is there in iSub.

I got the headphone remote control in today to test (it’s an iLuv iEA15 headphone remote control). On my iPhone 4S on iOS 5.1, the forward and back functions are working for me in both iSub 3.0.4 and 3.0.5. I’m not sure why some other controllers aren’t working, but the support is there in iSub.

Ben, the app is out now. And I’m having problems with caching manually albums. It appears that only the first track is correctly transferred, then everything stays on a loop and doesn’t progress. On the server, the Lame task stays at maximum CPU occupation (50% in my case, since it’s a dual core machine).